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Possessed or Blessed?

Ever have one of those weeks when every corner of your life seems to have had a hurricane blow through? Well, this past week has been that way for me. I won’t go into the gory details but suffice it to say I was beginning to lose it when my computer started acting strange.

It began when I had to quickly order a part for one of the bathrooms we were renovating. What should have taken me 10 minutes on the computer turned into demonic possession.

Every time I entered the payment information, the screen refreshed and reloaded. As I am not a night person, I thought maybe I hit a wrong key. I re-entered the information only to have it re-load again. I did it a third time with the same result. As I was getting ready to do it again I remembered the old adage about insanity being the act of doing the same thing over and over with the expectation of a different outcome. I got on the chat mode and shared my tale. Twenty minutes go by and she asks me to call the 800 number and place the order the old fashion way. I spend another 30 minutes on the phone to place the order. Exhausted and hoping the demon would slither out during the night I decided to shut down the computer and start fresh in the morning. I needed to shut down and restart myself as well.

But morning brought the same issue. I could not sign onto my calendar, my email, and my banking website. They all kept re-loading the page. It was at this point that I started to come undone. Remember it was the culmination of a tough week so it didn’t take long for the vocabulary to be reduced to garbage and a twitch developed in my left eye.

To try and calm down, I switched gears and worked on a draft copy of a blog. But calm was not on the schedule for every so often the Find and Replace drop down screen would come up and stop me from putting my train of thoughts on paper. For a writer, this is akin to watching your words die in a five car pile-up.

Not wanting to bother my son in love who is the Star Wars Yoda of computers, I called into the Geek Squad. They were most kind and took possession of my computer to search, seek out and destroy whatever had taken possession of my computer. Two hours later having cleared out the cache, removed unused programs; they suggested using a different browser. They assured me no exorcism had been needed.

I shut down my computer and decided I had earned an afternoon at the Lakeridge Winery Seafood Festival. Seafood and wine was the cure. Lots of wine…

Sunday after church, having prayed for a miraculous recovery, I carefully approached my computer fully expecting a demon to jump out. Possession was alive and well entrenched; however, I found that if I quickly entered my passwords in (after several attempts at just the right speed) I could get into my email and calendar. I didn’t bother trying to get into the bank website…too many numbers. Numbers and I have a love/hate relationship.

I changed the batteries in the mouse. I changed the batteries in the ergonomic keyboard. I swear my computer just laughed at me.

I was at a loss. I was near panic. I called my son in love, Rich, and explained the situation. He listened patiently, asked me to try a few things to no avail. He was at a loss as well. Possession was starting to sound like a good diagnosis. Or perhaps a whole new computer was needed; which sent me into spasms at the thought of setting up a whole new system.

Since I would be babysitting my two year old grandson on Monday, Rich said he’d pick up the little guy and would take a look at the “Demon Desktop” as I was calling it.

In the meantime, he suggested trading out the ergonomic wireless keyboard for an old wired one I still had in the closet. I did as I was told but the demonic behavior continued.

Rich came over as promised and began checking out the demon, I mean, computer.

And then he asks, “Where is the ergonomic keyboard now?”

“Ryker is playing with it. I figured it was bad.”

My two year old grandson loves to emulate both his dad who makes a living at working with computers and his older brother who loves to read his kindle and do his homework and play video games on his new laptop. He will often ask to just sit at my desk and play with the keyboard and watch the characters magically appear on the screen. It’s cute. Or so I thought.

“Did you turn it off?”

“There is no on/off switch”

“Did you remove the batteries?”

Oops! “No”

We both go into the family room where we see Ryker casually pushing buttons as he is watching his beloved Elmo count with The Count on Sesame Street. Rich takes the ergonomic keyboard from Ryker and pops out the batteries as he explains that since it is wireless, it is still communicating with my computer. My two year old grandson had virtually taken possession of my computer.

See, I knew it was possessed! But that didn’t explain what was happening when Ryker wasn’t here.

We trudge back into the office and Rich notices that the ergonomic keyboard does not have a calculator keypad on it and so he asks me where that is. I explain that I don’t use it so it is in my desk drawer.

“Are the batteries out of it?”

“I don’t know.”

Sure enough numbers key pad was buried under a bunch of other electronic stuff in my desk, being pressed into service indiscriminately with every opening, closing and jostling of my desk; secretly wreaking havoc to my everyday life.

We reinstalled the ergonomic keyboard minus the numbers keypad and battery. I had no further trouble with numbers except the find and replace drop down screen was still popping up.

My computer, while better, was still partially possessed.

Richard began looking at the keyboard. The Function key F5 seemed to be depressed while the other function keys sat higher. Using a letter opener we popped it back up and lo and behold the demon was gone!

My spasms of fear and frustration were replaced with side slitting laughter. It made me think of all the medical mayhem in my life and how while I was nervously waiting for results, I often thought the worst, only to find out that a simple procedure, dietary change, or prescription solved the problem.

While my week was filled with havoc, the resulting events made me realize that something that started out as feeling as if my world had been possessed was actually just what I needed to end the week – the blessing of laughter. In my case it was showcased as a demonic keyboard being driven by an adorable 28 lb. toddler named Ryker. Oh, and some stupidity on my part.

When have you had an issue that you were sure was the worst case scenario only to find out that it had a simple, easy solution to the problem? Please share.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:34